Web Business Resource

Here’s today’s tip: Remember the importance of getting traffic.

The amount of money you can make from a website is dependent on the traffic.

Generally, if you double your traffic, then you can double your income. (That’s assuming the traffic is of the same quality.)

You can buy traffic. But you can also gain traffic by promoting and marketing your website using free methods such as article marketing. Of course, you will be using your labor to promote your website in those cases.

What do you think?

A few nights ago I setup 4 new campaigns with Google AdWords.

I was already using Yahoo Search Marketing. I decided to also start with AdWords for two reasons: Firstly, AdWords lets you put minimum bids lower than $0.10. Secondly, I feel Google does more to combat click fraud and provide quality traffic.

Anyway, I use to not want to use PPC advertising because I did not like to spend so much money on advertising. However, I changed my mind about 6 months ago when I tested them out. For one, they did a lot better than I realized. I guess the advertising does so well because the traffic they send is very targeted. They send you people who are genuinely interested in your website, assuming you choose relevant keywords and make appropriate ads in your PPC campaign.

You can set the maximize price you’ll pay for clicks as low as $0.10 on Yahoo. You can set it even lower on Google AdWords. (Though, popular keywords will be inactive unless you bid a certain amount.) If your internet business model does not allow you to spend much on advertising per visitor, then you can just bid low amounts on long tail keywords.

The way I see it is this: If you do not make more than $0.10 per visitor on average, then your website is not monetized well enough which is probably due to it being a poor website.

If you have a good enough website, then users who are introduced to it will come back more often and will spread the word about your website. So, you can pay more to introduce people to your website if your website is better. Also, you may need to monetize your website better in other ways. For example, depending on your internet business model, you may need a better product line, better sales pages, or better ad placement.

If you think your website is not good enough yet, then start improving it and monetizing it better. If you think it is good enough already, then I highly recommend you sign up for AdWords and start by bidding very low amounts. You can set your budget as low as you want, so you can try AdWords without spending too much. So why not try it out?

I have been trying a lot of PPC (pay-per-click) advertising lately. Even on my websites that are only monetized with contextual ads have done well.

I only recommend working with well-known companies such as Google AdWords, Yahoo Search Marketing, or Microsoft AdCenter.

If you make the minimum bids on long-tail keywords, you can get PPC traffic that costs you $0.10 per click or even less.

The traffic is pretty good quality.

If your website is monetized well enough, you will make a profit. For example, if you pay $0.10 per click, then you will make a profit as long as you make more than $0.10 per visitor on average.

Having a great website will be easier to monetize well. If it is a good, useful website, then the visitors will tend to stay for longer, they will come back, and they will spread the word about your website. That will give you more page-views for each click you buy which will lead to you being able to make more money, whether you are publishing ads or selling products of your own.

If you are not making more than $0.10 per visitor on average, then try to monetize your website better. You can monetize it better by creating a new product to sell, by publishing more ads or different ads, and by making your website better.

I have done a good amount of article marketing throughout the past. I still do. It works well since I can write on my own (unlike those who have to hire writers).

Nonetheless, I think article marketing is over-rated. The traffic does not seem like it is worth the effort put into writing articles. Maybe it will work if you write lame articles without effort, but I doubt it.

I am starting to think that it would be better to just post all the articles on your own site and not submit any to article directories. The added unique content to your website would make your website better both in the eyes of users and search engines. Then you could put your time and money into marketing other ways, and I think it would work better because you will have improved your website.

I’m not sure, though. I’m speculating. And I suppose it depends on the details of your specific website. Article marketing may work better for some websites than it does for others.

What do you think? Do you use article marketing? If so, how well has it worked for you?

Marketing is probably the most important part of not only an internet-based business but of any business. You can have the best product in the world, but it will not sell if people do not know about it. Hawthorne Direct is a direct marketing company that offers short form advertising. They can help you produce television commercials as well as other forms of advertising such as mail and print advertising.

In addition to short form advertising, Hawthorne Direct also produces long form advertisements such as infomercials.

I have seen some websites advertise using infomercials. Most commonly on TV, I see the websites that sell out-of-the-box home businesses.

What seems best to me about Hawthorne Direct is that they have 21 years of experience and offer a wide range of services which they customize to meet their customers’ individual needs. That is important because you want to work with a reputable company if you plan to start a big advertisement campaign.

One thing I have noticed is that very few websites advertise on TV. I think it is because TV advertising is expensive.

It probably makes more sense to spend advertising money on internet-based ads. That way, the viewers of the advertisement will already be on the internet and will be more likely to visit your website.

Although, I did see a GoDaddy commercial during the SuperBowl. I wonder how much that cost them.

What do you think?

I often stress on this blog that you must base your marketing strategy on having a great, helpful website. You will waste your time trying to market a bad, useless website.

If you have a site worth promoting, let me suggest a few simple ways to promote it for free.

Forum Posting - You can post on internet discussion forums and message boards. Put a link in your signature, and the other users will click on your link to view your site if they find your posts interesting and helpful.

Article Marketing - You can also promote your website for free by writing articles and submitting them to article directories. Put a link to your website in the bottom of the article in the article bio.

Blog Commenting - When you post a comment on a blog, you usually can put in your website URL. You can use this to promote your website. Make sure you post quality comments, or else nobody will bother to visit your website.

You can market your website in a lot of ways, but I hope those suggestions come in handy.

What do you think?

You can promote your website or online service by giving stuff away for free. People love free stuff.

Giving away free stuff will get people interested in your website or service, and it will build customer loyalty. Additionally, free stuff can make for a great viral marketing campaign. Third-parties will independently spread the word about the free stuff you offer, and the news can spread like a virus, and that will bring you in new website visitors and customers.

For example, if a car dealership offers free car washes, then they can use that to gain publicity and new customers. The free car wash will likely advertise itself in a viral way. And then the car dealership can try to sell cars to the people who come in for a car wash. Even if people do not buy a car immediately, the car wash would have gained enough publicity that people would have the dealership in mind when they do want a car.

You really cannot make it on the internet unless you give something away for free. Take this blog right here for example. You all come here because I give away free information and advice about internet business.

In fact, information is the number one commodity on the internet. Great website content (which is free information for your web visitors) is the most important part of most marketing strategies.

Whatever you do, you want to give something related to your product away for free.

What do you think?

For a long time, internet business gurus have recommended submitting to directories as a way to promote a site. The main advantage of submitting to directories is SEO (search engine optimization). The main way that major search engines rank a site in their listings is by link popularity.

As the search engines, name Google, improve their algorithms, they are becoming better at deciphering organic links from unnatural links. Paid links and directory links are losing value in the search engines. Nonetheless, it seems they still do help.

However, if you submit too many links too quickly, you will set off spam filters in the search engines. If you do that, the search engines might discount the links or penalize your site in the rankings.

For that reason, you will maximize your time and effort if you only submit to a few directories at a time. I would suggest to submit to only a few per day at most.

Additionally, you want to vary your anchor text. If each of your links has the same exact anchor text, then the search engines will see that as unnatural.

What do you think?

You may have heard that you can promote your website on YouTube. You can, but you have to do it right.

I highly recommend that you DO NOT SPAM. Almost anywhere, spam rarely works as well as more developed marketing methods. Spamming will get your account deleted, and it will hurt your business’s reputation.

Simply speaking, you can market on YouTube by doing the following: Make good videos and upload them on YouTube. Place your URL in the video, and put the full URL of your website in the text description of the video. You want to make the video go viral, so try to make a video that lots of people will like and want to share with their friends. If you want a sample, check out this YouTube video that I made to promote my World Hunger and Poverty Forums: 18,000 Children Die Every Day From World Hunger

You will notice my video is moving and powerful. Additionally, you will see that it displays the URL of my forums both at the beginning and the end of the video. Also, take note of the link in the description. Most importantly, the video is not spam. The tags are accurate, and the video is useful and original.

Although I went in a different direction, funny videos do the best on YouTube. If you can make a funny video about the topic of your website, you probably want to do that. People go on YouTube for funny videos most of all, and they are most likely to share funny videos with their friends and associates.

What do you think?

I hope you have all had a very happy holiday! I usually see a noticeable dip in web traffic during the weekends and holidays, but I didn’t today.

Anyway, the holiday season has made me think of a quick tip for you all. If you want to promote your website, use the holidays to have special promotions. Most importantly, you can run holiday contests. If you have enough time, maybe you can work something out for this New Year’s Day. Of course, the year will have many other holidays if you cannot make New Year’s Day.

I have found a trick for making a website popular. If you have a great website but still need to increase your regular traffic this method may work for you. You just need to have the site monetized well enough that you can make more in revenue than you will spend on PPC advertising. You can do this by making the minimum bids for long tail PPC key phrases. Most PPC will let you set your maximum bid at $0.10 or even lower. Then just make sure you make more than $0.10 per visitor. If you have a great website, you can most likely do that because your visitors will stay on your website long enough to buy something, click on your ads, or do whatever causes you to earn money.

If you make more in revenue than you spend on the visitors, then you can keep reinvesting the revenue back into even more ads. That will keep increasing your budget and thus your total amount of visitors. If you have a great website, a lot of these visitors will continue you to return and will tell their friends. They will sign up for any newsletters you have, subscribe to any feeds you have, and join any membership system that you have.

Remember, the two main things you need for this method: You need to have a great website, and you need to have monetized the website well.

What do you think?